chris says:

“For instance, we have to have special education teachers on staff. It takes TWO teachers to handle a class of 5.”

Would it be offensive to say that that is EXACTLY the kind of thing I would cut?

Turning an old phrase on its head: All get some, some get all. I don’t care if the claimant is a big investment bank, military families, 80% salaried(top 3 yrs) retired feds, or a developmentally disabled kid. There shouldn’t be a universal hookup!

I would like to see more of the federal government getting the absolute best minds together to make the best textbooks. Finished educational materials for the school to use. Grants to academics is something the Gov does very well.

I can’t believe that there is ANYTHING in high school math, or lower, that a publicly funded project couldn’t do better.

It can’t cost more than $5 to print a big glossy textbook. Why are we buying [?tens of thousands/per title?] each year at 10x that price?

Once you own the rights you own the distribution. Want it on the web? No problem. Print up some more books? Of course.

chris says:

“What method would you prescribe for picking these minds?”

A contest would be the easiest way. Specify what a certain age should be learning. There is a lot of stuff on how the brain develops and different games to increase these abilities. Tell contestants that their work should have the right approach for the population they are dealing with.

No cash up front.

Then you’ve got to think about two things
*how much do textbook authors get paid now?
*how much is a quality text worth if you have absolute rights to its distribution?

First off, can we do this for less?

Off the internet I’ve found that tb authors get 7.5 to 15 percent of book price, which for lazy’s sake I’m going to say is $50(I’d bet that’s low).

I did a comparison of us pop by age at wolframalpha and I’d estimate that there are about 4m per grade in public schools. Assume different books for every grade, and that it’s 10% less for various reasons. So maybe 3.5m * my $50 textbook cost. That is 175M for one subject/one grade level across the US. It wouldn’t be that much each year, but books get old/lost/destroyed in huge numbers. Book edition turnover probably 3-5 years.

This is all conjecture, but it leads to an inescapable conclusion: this is a MASSIVE market, and one that is much too boring to get noticed. No wonder they make so much money!

Now to the second bit, about owning the rights to distribution. The long-term goal would be to build an open source of knowledge. The dept of ed could do digital distribution to schools without paying anybody. As this progressed it would create enormous pressure on prices of other textbooks.

Coincidentally, Pharma came up as a related case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbook

There is a bit about the reimportation of textbooks being an issue to the lobby groups of the textbook manufacturers. They sell for less overseas and are unhappy when those books make a return to the US domestic market. And why should US government, being the overwhelming consumer of these products, be interested in protecting higher prices it will pay?

chris says:

I think you’ve got to separate the world, as it stands at this moment, from the variety of plausible worlds that would exist if more people did their jobs properly.

Centralized government is a wining formula, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Many times it isn’t an optimal solution: better ways of doing something.

Same way as a free market isn’t the best way to do EVERYTHING, being good at many things is going to have to do. Where markets break down is where people are trading things at opposite ends of value. Say you needed a heart, and were willing to pay any price. You could find someone willing, but probably not qualified, to find you a donor heart. The negotiation with the ultimate donor wouldn’t be pretty to watch.

I think there is a gross-out element if someone gets paid to maximize profit when it comes to life and death. For many things paying people, through a general collection, to simply make the RIGHT decision is better.

Germany does their health system like that. The government is the wallet and they have competitive groups of management teams to handle the day-to-day. The success metric is both quality of care and cost.

So their system is privately managed(private-sector managers are generally VASTLY superior to public sector counterparts), but the money comes out of taxes.

Other countries have the balls to demand bigger discounts on large buys. US companies will happily sell at half the price, because it is still very profitable, but nobody in government demands it.

chris says:

Sorry, I’ve gone back to my normal blog style with high-emphasis caps. From the traditional perspective it’s rude, but it works when used OCCASIONALLY in a way conveys meaning

LibertyLover says:

Centralized government is a wining formula

That’s where we’ll have to agree to disagree. If you can’t see it coming down around our ears (and Ireland’s and Spain’s and Portugal’s and Greece’s and Argentina’s and etc.) right now, no amount of discussion will convince you otherwise.

My opinion.

This has been a very enjoyable conversation.

Same here. Take care.